Thursday, August 30, 2012

Kitten's First Full Moon

Theme: Kitten’s First Full Moon, by Kevin Henkes

Honey Pot is 2 years and 3 months old

We love participating in the Virtual Book Club! And we are
so pleased to read that it will continue beyond the summer. This month’s
featured author, Kevin Henkes, is my favorite so far. We took out three of his
books from the library, and read them throughout the week. I had originally
planned a few activities for My Garden, but after seeing Honey Pot
choose Kitten's First Full Moon to read so much more than the others, I had to use this one.
And I have fallen more in love with it too.

The story is about a little kitten that sees a bowl of milk
in the sky, and tries to get to it. She leaps off of steps, climbs trees, etc.
in attempt to get a sip…but in reality, the bowl of milk is just the moon. It
is such a cute story, and has a happy ending. So here follows our activities
for Kitten’s First Full Moon.

Crayon Resist Painting

I had been seeing this fun craft on Pinterest quite a bit.
Because Kitten’s First Full Moon is entirely in grayscale, I knew we had
to do some type of black and white craft. This fit the bill. First I drew a
simple cat face in white crayon, and then I let Honey Pot paint a seemingly
blank piece of paper with watered-down black paint. (Looking back, I would have
rather traced an actual image from the story, as it would have been super easy
and cute!) I told her an image would magically appear! As she painted, it
emerged more and more.

We both thoroughly enjoyed this craft, and I intend on doing
this one again and again. Love!

Magic Milk Paint

We found this idea at Modern Parents Messy Kids. Please take
a look at their magic milk, because ours is soooo poorly photographed. You
really can’t see how special this experiment is until you see theirs! Here is a
glimpse:

via Modern Parents Messy Kids

As far as ours – first I poured some milk into a small dish,
and then we added a few drops of food coloring. I let Honey Pot’s choose the
colors. Unfortunately one of them was black. (LoL.) She dipped a toothpick into
dish soap, and then into the milk dish. The colors swirled around, away from
it.

And as she swirled, the colors mixed and very quickly became
black.

A fun experiment, but we’ll have to try it again with
brighter colors for sure!

Cat Mask

I printed a mask for Honey Pot from Craft Jr., a website
with tons of cute printable animal faces. Originally I had tied a string around
it for Honey Pot to wear, but after a short time of play it snapped off. So we
improvised and taped it to a Popsicle stick. It was still fun. This was just
for a bit of imaginative play. We meowed and pretended to sip milk from a bowl
just like kittens do.

Problem Solving

Throughout the story, Kitten makes various attempts to get
to the bowl of milk in the sky. I decided to make a fun problem-solving game
out of a similar situation. First I took a bowl from her play kitchen set. Then
I gave her a kitten from my childhood stuffed animal stash, and told her that
she wanted the bowl of milk. I placed the bowl in various situations, where
Honey Pot would have to think about how she could get the bowl down. "What could she do?" I would ask her.

First, I put it
on top of the door…

So Honey Pot decided to close the door to knock it down.

Then I placed it atop the fan…

And so Honey Pot turned on the fan!

Next, the top of her open closet…

So she closed the closet.

Then the bowl of milk was “just waiting” on top of the
bathroom sink faucet…

So she stepped up on her stool to reach it.

And each time the kitten got to her bowl of milk, she had to
take a sip of course!

I wedged the bowl into Honey Pot’s blinds, with the cord
hanging down in her reach…

And after thinking for a moment, she helped her kitten grab
a hold of the cord, to open the blinds and knock it down.

And finally, I hid the bowl at the bottom of a bin of
blocks. At first Honey Pot had her kitten try to dig for it. But that didn’t
work.

Then after much deliberating, and a bit of help, she decided
to dump the whole thing.

2 comments:

We love all your activities especially the problem solving one. We will be doing this activity as it gives so much learning in a fun way. You did very nice activities about the Kitten's first full moon book. We worked on this book too and really like it http://creativefunmum.blogspot.com/2012/09/blue-moon.html

About Me

Hi there! My name is Lauri and I am a SAHM of two wonderful children: Honey Pot (4 years old) and Little M&M (2 years old). Thank you for joining us here at Mom’s Tot School. We like to use this spot on the web to share our weekly toddler and preschool themes, as well as our party themes. Take a look around!